Roomies(74)

But how would I really know?

“Why did you stop?” he asks, cupping my hips. “Is it okay?”

His chest has a faint sheen of sweat—from exertion, from the heat of our bodies moving together—and I press my palm to it; his heart is racing. I search his face. His eyes are clear, maybe a little worried.

“It’s good.”

I am so bad at asking for what I want.

“Did I hurt you?” he whispers.

Shaking my head, I say, “No.”

He sits up beneath me and wraps his arms around my waist, looking up at my face. “What are you thinking? What can I say to make this okay?”

“I guess I’m wondering what we’re doing.”

He gives me a wicked, cheeky smile. “I thought we were busy making love.”

“Is that what this is?” I honestly have never felt this before, so I don’t even know what to call it. But I’m not sure I can do this and keep myself from falling in love with him.

He kisses my chin. “Does it feel like something else to you?”

“I think it’s starting to feel like that to me, but I don’t actually know.” I press my mouth to his and let him deepen it, before pulling away the tiniest bit. “It feels like we should make sure we’re on the same page after”—he kisses me—“what happened with Lulu and—”

He interrupts me with another kiss. “And the fact that we’re already married?” he asks. His hand moves up my back and into my hair.

“Yeah, exactly. We’ve talked about logistics and backstory and fantasy, but we haven’t really talked about feelings.”

“You were gone all day yesterday. I woke up this morning and you still weren’t here.” He tilts his head, sucking on my neck. “I thought I fucked it up with you, and I honestly have never felt so panicked in my life.”

“The initial plan was a year,” I whisper.

“I say to hell with the initial plan.”

“It’s more complicated than just having a new girlfriend. We took vows.”

Calvin grins up at me. “I’m aware.”

“Doesn’t that paradoxically complicate the new plan?”

“How am I supposed to know?” He laughs into my shoulder and bites me gently. “I’ve never done this before. I just know I’m falling for the girl I married.”





twenty-four


Calvin hands me my buzzing phone. “Lulu again.”

I put it facedown on the coffee table and turn back to my laptop. For the first time in ages, I woke up with words in my head, and I’m determined to get them down before they fade back into fog.

He lies behind me on the couch. “Aren’t you going to call her?”

“Not right now.”

I can feel him reading over my shoulder. “What is this?”

“I don’t even know, actually.” I’m so tempted to cover it up, to hide the words by closing my screen because it feels like a bare tree trunk—all naked and vulnerable to the elements. Instead, I pretend my hands are glued to the keyboard. I’ve listened to Calvin stumble through a new run of notes or work out a new composition a hundred times already, and he’s never shy. Why should I be?

“For a book?” he asks. He knows how long this has eluded me, what having that spark of inspiration has to mean.

“No. Maybe? I’m not sure.” I read back through the notes I’ve made, almost tentative, careful not to chase off the spark. I can’t stop thinking about how it felt to roam the city yesterday in search of a talent like his. I can’t stop thinking about how it feels to listen to him and Ramón play together. “I just had this thought in my head, about how we met and where you are now, and how it feels to have heard you in both places.”

His hand runs over my shoulder and into my shirt, resting at the swell above my heart. “I like the look on your face right now. So intense.”

I miss writing. I wrote endless short stories during college and while getting my master’s. I had to write every day or I felt like a clogged drain, full of words. The day I got my degree and turned to face the world as a person no longer under the protective umbrella of school, it seemed like all the ideas dried up.

And that’s been true since I started working at the theater. After talking to Robert and Jeff, I wonder if it’s because I’m surrounded by people who are brilliant in a way I’m not, and it leaves me feeling ordinary by comparison.

But this . . . writing about how it feels to listen to music, to have found him—it almost feels like I’m writing a description of how my organs work together, what keeps me breathing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this before.

His hand slips lower still, toying with my nipple, and his mouth comes to my neck, warm and biting. “Can I do this while you write?”

I’m still tender from the second round of makeup sex we had only an hour ago, but when his fingertips trap the peak of my breast in a gentle pinch, my whole body hums. “I’m not sure I could focus. It’d be like me putting my mouth on you while you play.”

His laugh is a low vibration against my skin. “We should try that later.”

I turn to capture his mouth in a kiss. “I’m almost done.”